In the wake of Star Wars’ massive and surprisingly success, studios went looking for the next Star Wars. We’ve seen this cycle again and again, which has led to some good things (the revival of Star Trek in 1979) and some bad (the original Battlestar Galactica). In the wake of Stephanie Meyer’s perplexingly popular Twilight,…
If True Blood Season Five could be easily summed up – and really, it can’t – the theme was about the consequences of one’s actions. Unlike the previous season, this one seemed determined to tidy things up and thin out the herd a bit. During the course of the season, Alan Ball let it be…
January 1929 was a very good month for comic strip readers. On the 7th they got to see the arrival of Tarzan and Buck Rogers while ten days later, fans of Thimble Theater met a brand new character named Popeye. The sailor was never intended to take over the strip but his popularity with readers…
Alexander and Ilya Salkind had sold Superman to the Golan-Globus Group/Cannon but wisely retained the rest of the family including Superboy. Thanks to Star Trek: The Next Generation pioneering first run syndication in 1987, the Salkinds realized the Teen of Steel would be perfect. Looking to produce this on the cheap, they set up shop…
When even Joss Whedon can’t nail a character, you know there’s a problem. For decades now, film and television has been struggling to take Wonder Woman from the comics and bring her to a wider audience. So far, they’ve managed the Super Friends and the delightfully awful television series with picture-perfect Lynda Carter. However, there…
I’m not sure we’ll get every story of heroism, bravery, and ingenuity that made World War II so endlessly fascinating, but by now we seem to have gotten the best of them. The war had a scope involving millions of people on a global scale never seen before so the stories of the atrocities and…
One of the most amazing things about the talented and long-missed Jim Henson is that he was always creating something new, exploring news forms of storytelling and puppetry. While he may have started out with single characters, such as Kermit, he went on to create characters that hawked cereal and interacted with humans on Saturday…
He brought out dreams to life. Raymond “Ray” Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013) died today at age 92, leaving behind a legacy of pioneering special effects work and a filmography that has deeply influenced writers, artists, and filmmakers for generations. Dubbed by Starlog as “The Man Who Work Miracles”, he was one…
Superman is a science fiction story. What else can you say about the sole survivor of a doomed planet coming to live on Earth? As a result, some of the best stories about the Man of Steel have been science fiction in nature so it’s a wonder that it has taken this long before one…
Good Riddance By Cynthia Copeland 224 pages, $17.95, AbramsComicArts For years, Cynthia Copeland has been mining her personal experiences to produce books about families and things families can do together. As a result, she has been recommended by Oprah and others and has carved out a nice little career with her prose and illustrations. She…
The Inhumans were one of the last great creations by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Beginning with Medusa, introduced in Fantastic Four #36 in 1965, the full complement showed up nine months later. They were another branch of humanity, although it was a long time before readers learned the full story, especially as succeeding writers…
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward By H.P. Lovecraft and I.N.J. Culbard 128 pages, SelfMadeHero/Abrams, $19.95 I never could warm up to H.P. Lovecraft’s prose. It was turgid and overly descriptive, so on the one hand, he had a tremendous imagination but put me to sleep as he conjured up the unimaginable horrors. His visual…
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